Just anecdotal, but I was using Claude Code for everything a few months ago, and it seemed great. Now, it is making a ton of mistakes, doing the wrong thing, misunderstanding context, and just generally being unusable.

I now have been using Codex and everything has been great (I still swap back and forth but generally to check things out.)

My theory is just that the models are great after release to get people switching, then they cut them back in capabilities slowly over time until the next major release to increase the hype cycle.

Is it the models themselves or the tools around them? There's that patch[1] that floats around for Claude Code that's supposed to solve a lot of these problems by adjusting its tool-level prompts. Also, if it were the models themselves, wouldn't Cursor users have the same complaints (do they? I haven't heard anything but the only Cursor users I talk to are coworkers)?

I think it's more likely they're trying to optimize the Claude Code prompts to reduce load on their system and have overcorrected at the cost of quality.

1: https://gist.github.com/roman01la/483d1db15043018096ac3babf5...

Part hypecycle, part desperate attempts to rein in usage